It appears that someone tried to detonate two suitcases containing liquid explosives on a train in Germany on July 31st.
Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) — Two suitcases containing bottles of gasoline, propane gas and a detonating device that were found abandoned in German regional trains last month were bombs primed to go off and kill a “high number” of people, police said.
“We’re accusing as yet unknown suspects of having tried to ignite unconventional flammable and explosive devices on July 31, 2006, in the cities of Dortmund and Koblenz with the aim of killing a high number of people,” Federal Prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum said at a press conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, today. The perpetrators are suspected of being members of a “domestic terrorist organization,” Griesbaum said.
A suitcase found abandoned on a regional train from Aachen to Hamm in western Germany was turned in by the train’s conductor in Dortmund. It contained a propane gas bottle, three bottles filled with gasoline and a detonating device, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said Aug. 1. On the same day another piece of luggage was found on another regional train from Moenchengladbach to Koblenz about 75 miles to the South. It too contained a propane gas bottle.
“We have to take this event very seriously,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a faxed statement today. “We have to expect that the danger of a repeat attempt still exists.”
And it appears that the incident may have a Lebanon connection:
The July 31 attempt “is likely to have a terrorist background,” Zierke said. Investigators found pieces of paper with Arabic letters and telephone numbers from Lebanon in clothes which were in the suitcases to pad the gas bottles, he said. They also found starch bags from Lebanon which were sold in a store in or around Essen, a city in North-Rhine Westphalia.
Investigators have video material of the perpetrators, though they have not yet been identified, Zierke said. He asked the German public to help identify the people, and offered a reward of 50,000 euros ($63,950).
Police are looking for two males, who transported the two suitcases at Cologne train station. Video material of them was shown at the press conference today.
So much for those saying that last week’s story about the terror cell in England was much ado about nothing.
